Technology should matter again

[Iceberg1er]

I don't have any idea about pottery yet I build a stone granary. Why is that? It should be you can't build until you know how again. The tech and civic tree is just click lowest turn count as it doesn't matter until modern age and planes/explorers. They have literally No point other than invisible numbers in background and then just getting a different unit. I want it to force you to just make people (that you can't sustain) without the tech to sustain it. How can I make a city without a single technology? Like you literally select animal husbandry or whatever but can already build a horse corral prior...
Make the techs and vics major choices again. I just click click click watch flashy lights no thought, no buildup and payoff. It's boring

 

[Yzman]

What difficulty are you playing on? Tech definitely matters, for military and for buildings you can construct. Seems like most of your complaints are around a few specific techs or just what civ has always been about.

 

[Siptah]

I don't have any idea about pottery yet I build a stone granary. Why is that?

While the tech tree is often inconsequential (and has also been in previous games), this is actually historically accurate. PPN granaries made of stone or bricks existed.

How can I make a city without a single technology?

You start with a lot of technology. It's 4000 BC - humans made incredible technological advances in the 6000 years before that, and you got most of it when you start. What defines a city is difficult to assess, but for example, despite lacking urban structures (which is why I think it is not a city), some consider Çatal Höyük a city because it had several thousand inhabitants a few thousand years before the start of civ. And spoiler: all the techs that you can research in the first three tiers (excluding writing) were known to some people in the world at the game's start date.

Like you literally select animal husbandry or whatever but can already build a horse corral prior...

Even worse, you can do this when your continent is called America and you are playing Mayans!

 

[chazzycat]

PPN granaries made of stone or bricks existed.

Totally unrelated, but I was curious what this meant. According to Google AI, "PPN Granary" likely refers to Principle Protected Notes in the context of investment products." Thanks, AI!

After using my brain for a moment I found the real answer: "pre-pottery Neolithic".

 

[MutilationWave]

Even worse, you can do this when your continent is called America and you are playing Mayans!

I know a lot of people seem to want to play civ like it's real world history, but for me it's always been fantasy/alternate timeline. Like maybe the American native horses weren't extinct in this timeline.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I know a lot of people seem to want to play civ like it's real world history, but for me it's always been fantasy/alternate timeline. Like maybe the American native horses weren't extinct in this timeline.

Given that the horse had to be genetically modified to make it useful as a domestic animal for anything other than Meat, and that several other equids were domesticated well before the Horse (such as the Donkey, domesticated as a pack AND riding animal about 2000 years before the horse was), the importance attached to the animal is all derived from its later history, not its first appearance anywhere on the map.

Furthermore, in 4000 BCE the Americas weren't the only part of the world where horses were absent: All the rest of the world except a swath of land from Mongolia in the east to approximately modern Pomerania were also Non-Horse, including such 'Civ Start' areas as India, China, Southeast Asia, Mesopotamia, Africa and the entire Mediterranean basin. The earliest depiction of Horses in Mesopotamian art, in fact, isn't until 2400 BCE, or about 1500 years after the game starts.

Since the latest scientific data proving the domestication of the horse as a draft animal isn't until about 2900 - 2300 BCE, for about the first 25 - 25 turns of the game a Horse Resource should realistically provide +2 Food and Nothing Else.

- And the Horse Resource should only be available on One Continent, only on Flat Plains tiles on the northern half of the map. Since Civ has never allowed us to actually move or spread botanical or biological resources, though, that would leave the majority of Civs strictly Foot-Bound or plodding behind Oxen (Cattle) for the Antiquity Age.

There are a lot of compromises that have to be made to keep the game even vaguely playable, and a great many of them are exemplified by the Horse, a man-made (genetically) Resource that spread world-wide from a single source north of the Caspian Sea - reaching, as a chariot draft animal at least, from the Atlantic Coast of France to China in less than 1000 years, and the rest of the world except for Antarctica just as fast as people could figure out how to transport them.

 

[MutilationWave]

Given that the horse had to be genetically modified to make it useful as a domestic animal for anything other than Meat, and that several other equids were domesticated well before the Horse (such as the Donkey, domesticated as a pack AND riding animal about 2000 years before the horse was), the importance attached to the animal is all derived from its later history, not its first appearance anywhere on the map.

Furthermore, in 4000 BCE the Americas weren't the only part of the world where horses were absent: All the rest of the world except a swath of land from Mongolia in the east to approximately modern Pomerania were also Non-Horse, including such 'Civ Start' areas as India, China, Southeast Asia, Mesopotamia, Africa and the entire Mediterranean basin. The earliest depiction of Horses in Mesopotamian art, in fact, isn't until 2400 BCE, or about 1500 years after the game starts.

Since the latest scientific data proving the domestication of the horse as a draft animal isn't until about 2900 - 2300 BCE, for about the first 25 - 25 turns of the game a Horse Resource should realistically provide +2 Food and Nothing Else.

- And the Horse Resource should only be available on One Continent, only on Flat Plains tiles on the northern half of the map. Since Civ has never allowed us to actually move or spread botanical or biological resources, though, that would leave the majority of Civs strictly Foot-Bound or plodding behind Oxen (Cattle) for the Antiquity Age.

There are a lot of compromises that have to be made to keep the game even vaguely playable, and a great many of them are exemplified by the Horse, a man-made (genetically) Resource that spread world-wide from a single source north of the Caspian Sea - reaching, as a chariot draft animal at least, from the Atlantic Coast of France to China in less than 1000 years, and the rest of the world except for Antarctica just as fast as people could figure out how to transport them.

This is exactly what I mean. Thanks for the info, I love to learn about real world history.

So it doesn't bother me at all that horses are everywhere and easily domesticable in civ. I don't see the civ worlds as our real world. It's another dimension, or a fantasy rewrite of history, or whatever people want to believe to keep them from saying nooo it wasn't like that. Like you said, it's a game and it needs to be somewhat balanced, even as it draws from real world history for inspiration.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This is exactly what I mean. Thanks for the info, I love to learn about real world history.

So it doesn't bother me at all that horses are everywhere and easily domesticable in civ. I don't see the civ worlds as our real world. It's another dimension, or a fantasy rewrite of history, or whatever people want to believe to keep them from saying nooo it wasn't like that. Like you said, it's a game and it needs to be somewhat balanced, even as it draws from real world history for inspiration.

What the new research about equine domestication does indicate, though, is that virtually all the Tech Trees in all the games have gotten it wrong so far.

The Wheel comes about 600 - 800 years before Animal Husbandry/Horse domestication and doesn't get you 'Chariots' at all - it gets you heavy solid-wheeled wagons drawn by Oxen that allow you to manage herds away from major rivers in the open steppes, because now you can haul all your household goods along on the wagons.

So Wheel = place Pastures away from any river.

And Wheel is virtually simultaneous with Bronze Working, because Bronze was the first metal strong enough to make saw teeth out of that wouldn't be worn right off in minutes when trying to cut across the grain of wood - which you have to be able to do smoothly to make any kind of Wheel (Pottery Wheels only work for toys, such as the Aztecs had, not large 'working' wheels - you need smoothly rounded solid wood planks and later, heat/steam-formed wooden rims and spokes for chariots)

So Bronze Working - Wheel (could even be combined into a single Technology)

Horse/Animal Domestication, after a few centuries' delay and the above Wood Forming Technology, gets you Chariots. After another few centuries, you get people riding horses = Cavalry.

And at almost the same time as people start riding horses, they invent the Composite Bow in central Asia that is short enough to be easily wielded from horseback - which an ordinary Self Bow is too long to do without smacking your horse in the neck with the bow.

Oh, and as soon as horses are available as draft animals, a primitive 'fifth wheel' is invented to allow steerable 4-wheeled wagons, so Horse Domestication also gets you much better freight hauling - more Production for your cities.

All of this takes place before Iron Working, which is about the only part that Civ VII gets right - but it's no worse than every other Tech Tree in every other game out there so far that tries to cover the same period.

 

[bigjim1]

Despite being a historian, I'e never been too bothered by the unrealistic tech trees in all the Civ games (and I've played them all, right back to the Avalon Hill boardgame). But I really agree with the OP about how unimportant they are in Civ VII and how that detracts from the game. The fact that you don't need a specific resource (like horses or iron) to build specific units exacerbates the problem. As a result, every Civ feels the same and every game feels a bit too similiar to every other game.

I would like to see some tweaks to the tech trees and the resources model that would ensure that our alternative histories can spin off in wildly unpredictable ways.

It would be great if Civ could allow for alternative tech trees, where you can ask your wisest people to find a way around a problem like no horses; a successful solution might send you down a very different tech tree with unpredictable consequences. For example, imagine if zebras had been domesticable (they're not; too aggressive and dangerous); invading Europeans would have been met by some of the most dangerous cavalry in history and the whole history of the imperial age might have looked VERY different. As it stands, every Civ researches the same techs in almost the same order, and they make very little difference.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

Suede did a very interesting video on this topic recently called what Heroes 3 got right. In trying to scale everything back, making everything balanced and nothing too OP the devs are making a boring game experience. Bold statement. But I totally agree.

 

[JNR13]

Suede did a very interesting video on this topic recently called what Heroes 3 got right. In trying to scale everything back, making everything balanced and nothing too OP the devs are making a boring game experience. Bold statement. But I totally agree.

With mementos, they added a whole mechanic just to break the game with OP stuff.

 

[protocol7]

A grinding mechanic for non-cosmetic items is certainly a way to get people to finish games.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It would be great if Civ could allow for alternative tech trees, where you can ask your wisest people to find a way around a problem like no horses; a successful solution might send you down a very different tech tree with unpredictable consequences. For example, imagine if zebras had been domesticable (they're not; too aggressive and dangerous); invading Europeans would have been met by some of the most dangerous cavalry in history and the whole history of the imperial age might have looked VERY different. As it stands, every Civ researches the same techs in almost the same order, and they make very little difference.

Zebras, like many other equids, lack the 'domestication' gene that was bred into horses over 1000 years or so. As I understand it, the problem was to overcome the equid's natural, bred-in-the-bone fear of having something above and behind him - because that's where the big cats like leopards and lions attack from. Unfortunately, it's also where cart drivers and horse riders appear to the horse so the natural reaction was stark screaming panic, which makes it hard to get the horse to do anything useful.

In the Middle East, interestingly, almost exactly what you are describing actually happened. Native to that area was the Hemippi, a now-extinct equid (sometimes termed the Syrian Wild Ass) that was smaller than the average donkey (so not rideable at all) but a faster runner than even the average horse. Like many other equids, they could not be domesticated, but they could be bred with donkeys to produce the Kunga, the first known example of human-directed animal hybridization, which could be domesticated and used as a draft animal for wagons and the Sumerian War Carts we knew and 'loved' in Civ VI.

In a manner of speaking, Civ VII includes 'alternatives', but hides them. Thus, you can have 'cavalry' or chariots without any Horse resources in sight, they just aren't as good as if you had access to 'real' Horses. To me, that represents either that you are trading (smuggling) in horses on the quiet or using alternatives like donkey-hemippe hybrids from animals that don't appear on the map at all.

Donkeys, by the way, are depicted in Middle Eastern art being ridden as far back as 3000 BCE, well before any indication of domesticated horses being ridden. But the donkey's back is not strong enough to take the weight of a full-grown man for any length of time (and neither was a horse's, which was the other genetic manipulation done to them to make them really useful), so the 'donkey seat' right above the back legs was used - and also used by some of the first horse riders. This is much less stable and gives less control over the animal, so 'donkey cavalry' would not be able to charge at any speed, and the early donkey riders appear to have been scouts or messengers only.

 

[evonannoredars]

Zebras, like many other equids, lack the 'domestication' gene that was bred into horses over 1000 years or so. As I understand it, the problem was to overcome the equid's natural, bred-in-the-bone fear of having something above and behind him - because that's where the big cats like leopards and lions attack from. Unfortunately, it's also where cart drivers and horse riders appear to the horse so the natural reaction was stark screaming panic, which makes it hard to get the horse to do anything useful.

In the Middle East, interestingly, almost exactly what you are describing actually happened. Native to that area was the Hemippi, a now-extinct equid (sometimes termed the Syrian Wild Ass) that was smaller than the average donkey (so not rideable at all) but a faster runner than even the average horse. Like many other equids, they could not be domesticated, but they could be bred with donkeys to produce the Kunga, the first known example of human-directed animal hybridization, which could be domesticated and used as a draft animal for wagons and the Sumerian War Carts we knew and 'loved' in Civ VI.

In a manner of speaking, Civ VII includes 'alternatives', but hides them. Thus, you can have 'cavalry' or chariots without any Horse resources in sight, they just aren't as good as if you had access to 'real' Horses. To me, that represents either that you are trading (smuggling) in horses on the quiet or using alternatives like donkey-hemippe hybrids from animals that don't appear on the map at all.

Donkeys, by the way, are depicted in Middle Eastern art being ridden as far back as 3000 BCE, well before any indication of domesticated horses being ridden. But the donkey's back is not strong enough to take the weight of a full-grown man for any length of time (and neither was a horse's, which was the other genetic manipulation done to them to make them really useful), so the 'donkey seat' right above the back legs was used - and also used by some of the first horse riders. This is much less stable and gives less control over the animal, so 'donkey cavalry' would not be able to charge at any speed, and the early donkey riders appear to have been scouts or messengers only.

Would be neat if unit graphics had visual 'qualities', eg if you have zero horse resources your chariots are pulled by donkeys instead haha

 

[GeneralZift]

Would be neat if unit graphics had visual 'qualities', eg if you have zero horse resources your chariots are pulled by donkeys instead haha

This reminds me - I wish we could have different units depending on our surrounding resources. So Elephant Archer for example wouldn't be unique to Indians, it would be available to anyone near Elephants only. And same for Horse and Camel units.
Rather than Horse units being the main and just spin off cavalry units for camels and elephants, you could instead have your 'main' cavalry be whatever animal is near you.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: Please discuss the topic and not each other or forum moderation. If you have an issue, report it. Three posts removed.

 

[bigjim1]

Zebras, like many other equids, lack the 'domestication' gene that was bred into horses over 1000 years or so. As I understand it, the problem was to overcome the equid's natural, bred-in-the-bone fear of having something above and behind him - because that's where the big cats like leopards and lions attack from. Unfortunately, it's also where cart drivers and horse riders appear to the horse so the natural reaction was stark screaming panic, which makes it hard to get the horse to do anything useful.

In the Middle East, interestingly, almost exactly what you are describing actually happened. Native to that area was the Hemippi, a now-extinct equid (sometimes termed the Syrian Wild Ass) that was smaller than the average donkey (so not rideable at all) but a faster runner than even the average horse. Like many other equids, they could not be domesticated, but they could be bred with donkeys to produce the Kunga, the first known example of human-directed animal hybridization, which could be domesticated and used as a draft animal for wagons and the Sumerian War Carts we knew and 'loved' in Civ VI.

In a manner of speaking, Civ VII includes 'alternatives', but hides them. Thus, you can have 'cavalry' or chariots without any Horse resources in sight, they just aren't as good as if you had access to 'real' Horses. To me, that represents either that you are trading (smuggling) in horses on the quiet or using alternatives like donkey-hemippe hybrids from animals that don't appear on the map at all.

Donkeys, by the way, are depicted in Middle Eastern art being ridden as far back as 3000 BCE, well before any indication of domesticated horses being ridden. But the donkey's back is not strong enough to take the weight of a full-grown man for any length of time (and neither was a horse's, which was the other genetic manipulation done to them to make them really useful), so the 'donkey seat' right above the back legs was used - and also used by some of the first horse riders. This is much less stable and gives less control over the animal, so 'donkey cavalry' would not be able to charge at any speed, and the early donkey riders appear to have been scouts or messengers only.

Thanks for the info. I like what you're saying about underpowered cavalry, but immediately still pining for the slightly wider change: could the lack of a resource lead to an entirely different technology? Also, crucial strategic resources caused wars in the game (as in real life); I used to like games where I'd settled into a nice peaceful groove, focussing on science or culture, then I discover electricity and find there's no aluminium anywhere in my territory. If I couldn't find a friendly city state to befriend, I'd suddenly be forced onto a war footing. Civ VII has eliminated those kinds of unexpected twists, which feels like a loss.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

With mementos, they added a whole mechanic just to break the game with OP stuff.

The only problem is that this is for players only. The AI does not get mementos or am I wrong? I haven't actually played the game yet.

 

[Siptah]

The only problem is that this is for players only. The AI does not get mementos or am I wrong? I haven't actually played the game yet.

This is indeed a problem. There is a mod that hands mementos to the AI afaik, but it would be great if there was a base feature to either disable or enable mementos for all parties. Or make it a feature of difficulty levels: from immortal onwards, AI leaders equip their two related mementos.

 

[JNR13]

The only problem is that this is for players only. The AI does not get mementos or am I wrong? I haven't actually played the game yet.

Yes but that doesn't seem relevant to the issue of "allow players to break the game with OP stuff" to me.